Museums to get high-res multi-touch table from Ideum

Multi-touch surfaces seem to be growing in popularity with manufacturers at least. Ideum is the latest company to announce a new product in this area, but this one has a very specific target audience. {ad}

The Ideum Multitouch Table is a 50″ display with a higher resolution than Microsoft Surface and is aimed at museums and other public areas where accessing information is key to the experience. It is 16:9 format, capable of 1280×720 resolution, and has a 2000:1 contrast ratio.

The casing is aircraft-grade aluminium, while the top is thick tempered glass allowing the unit to withstand most knocks and weight in a busy public environment. A software package called the NUI Suite 1.0 Snowflake allows the table to be customized with new applications developed in Flash(AS3), C/C++/C#, Java, Python, and a range of other supported programming languages.

Jim Spadaccini, Director of Ideum, commented:

We’ve been working with museums for a decade and we wanted to create a platform where visitors could interact with museum content, programs and one another in new and meaningful ways … The intuitive nature of multi-touch interaction, the large surface and low table height: all of these factors contribute to the visitors experience. The table is both a physical and social platform, it does what the traditional computer kiosk cannot do.

Matthew’s Opinion
The Multitouch Table seems to offer a very solid unit for the museum environment. You get a rugged unit that won’t get damaged when out on exhibits; and it is coupled with a range of pre-made applications to slot your content into. On top of that you get the development kit as part of the package allowing you to extend the functionality of the table.

The one issue I have with units like this is the fact museums never have enough of them. At a busy event these tables will always be surrounded by people making it difficult to get anywhere near them and the information they contain. I haven’t seen a price for these tables, but hopefully Ideum have kept it to a level where buying multiple units won’t break the bank.

I look forward to seeing and using these tables next time I visit a museum. There is always more you want to know than what’s on offer in the pre-written exhibit material and these tables look like the perfect device to expand upon that information.

Speak Your Mind

v.kalyani

This is a welcome concept which has found its way to museums. It is really surprising that so much of information comes as a package in the form of a table. The tables with low height should be kept exclusively for small children to use, and of course the longer tables can be used by adults which in turn would induce interest to kids as well to look out for more information, and also, will help in lessening the crowd at each table. As there are certain restrictions which do not permit the visitors to go too close to the exhibits, the tables definitely solve this problem with some of them showing the some of the extraordinary and important exhibits of that particular museum.